Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A Pink Sparkly Fix

Sewing for little girls is so much fun. I had been wanting to make a little crayon tote for a while now. I made Kayla a little crayon roll up but how many crayon holders does one child need? So I decided to make a couple of little bag for a co-workers peanuts. The girls are ages 2 and 3. Cathy said that Sadie needed a little bag to carry around her Barney dvd's in. I originally drafted AND cut out all the pieces of a complicated dvd carrier. Finally sanity set in and decided not to invent this wheel. I had purchased a Lazy Girl purse pattern in Minnesota and decided it would be the right size for a 2 year old and should be able to hold her two inches of Barney dvd's. Cathy requested that it be safe for Sadie to sleep with so I changed up the purse strap and put two short handles on instead of one long strap. The font used for Sadie's name is called Walt. The tiny purse pattern was a pattern I got from my friend Pat. She has a Quilting Arts subscription and every now and then will show Ann and I fun little, quick projects. This was the perfect little accessory to use up some left over fabric. The purse is quilted with a flower pattern and her name is also quilted into the design. If you think my cursive handwriting is bad, you should see me quilt in cursive style. My "S" doesn't quite look like an "S".

Now for Emily, I made an ultra-deluxe crayon tote. Sometimes, improvements are such a great thing but on this project it was not. I wanted the tote to be durable enough for a 3 year old. I put iron-on interfacing on the crayon pockets. The end result was that it is hard to get the crayons in and out of. I also decided to put some iron on vinyl behind the crayon pockets so the crayons wouldn't get on the fabric. Then I had to put rick rack to hide the end of the vinyl. You can see where this is going, one thing leads to another and the project starts to snowball. I was proud of myself for sticking with the mission of having a fun, functional tote. Another mistake I made was to not really think about the measurements for the crayon pocket. In the design process, I guess I was only thinking about the measurements for a coloring book so that was the width measurement that I was thinking about. It should have been a little wider to give more ease for the crayons. The font used for Emily is called Fairytale which I thought appropriately went with the whole pink princess theme.

To finish the project, I took card stock and used some Wonder-under and ironed on leftover fabric to the card stock. The most time consuming part of the project was deciding what decorative stitches I wanted to use to embellish the card. Pretty easy. I can't wait to try some more cards. Oh, I forgot to tell you that all the fabric was sparkly. Perfect for a couple of little girls. So I was able to get my pink sparkly, girly fix for the last couple of weeks.

Music used for this project: U2 (well that's a given) and The Dresden Dolls. I had Coin-Operated Boy playing over and over. I needed a fun song while to listen to while sewing this fun project.

About Me

I'm a working mom who has a few too many hobbies. I've been sewing since 4th grade, making some pretty rough looking Barbie clothes by hand. I think I moved to the sewing machine around 7th or 8th grade. I've taken very few sewing classes. Because I spent a lot of years in Catholic school, I only had about 3 months of sewing in Home Ec. Most of what I've learned has come from the library, the internet and my friends.